Petaluma woman killed by train near Truckee

<p>A 59-year-old Petaluma woman was hit by a freight train and killed on Christmas Day outside of Truckee, and her son, a 24-year-old graduate of Casa Grande High School, was seriously injured.</p><p>Sydney Parks, a nurse practitioner at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael, and her son, Allen Young, were hiking Thursday afternoon after leaving the Royal Gorge cross-country ski resort in Soda Springs, which had closed earlier in the day. The area is about 12 miles west of Truckee.</p><p>The two thought they were hiking on a trail when a Union Pacific Railroad train plowing snow off the tracks approached them, according to officials and eyewitnesses.</p><p>The train sounded its whistle and started an emergency stop, but the two mistakenly moved into the train’s path on parallel tracks during whiteout conditions and poor visibility, said Nevada County Deputy Sheriff Ron Smith.</p><p>There were two sets of tracks, running east and west, and the pair scrambled for safety over a three-foot-high snow berm. But they inadvertently turned into the path of the oncoming train and when she fell, her son grabbed her by the shoulders, but was unable to pull her to safety, Smith said Friday.</p><p>“The train came around the curve, and Sydney lost her footing, and fell in front of it,” said Roger Young, Allen’s father. “Allen then jumped down to grab her, but the train still killed her, and he suffered a broken arm and a broken ankle,” Young told the the Petaluma Argus-Courier,</p><p>Allen Young was taken to a Truckee hospital, where he underwent surgery for a broken arm.</p><p>“It’s just typical of him to try to save his mother the way he did,” said Roger Young, a retired contractor who previously was married to Parks in lived in Petaluma before moving to Mount Shasta. </p><p>Allen Young was a swimmer at Casa Grande and at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in journalism.</p><p>He now works as a journalist for School Innovations & Advocacy, a multifaceted education services company in Sacramento.</p><p>An investigation into the 3:30 p.m. accident is under way by the National Transportation Safety Board.</p>